


Come Back To Me

by red_starshine



Series: Holidays With Chas & Constantine [4]
Category: Constantine (TV), Hellblazer & Related Fandoms
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Boats and Ships, Easter, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Resurrection, Sea Monsters, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-02
Updated: 2015-04-02
Packaged: 2018-03-20 20:09:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3663351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/red_starshine/pseuds/red_starshine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“He hath risen,” said John somewhere above Chas. “Hello there, mate. Welcome back.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Come Back To Me

**Author's Note:**

> Just a heads-up, this fic is a bit less fluffy than the other holiday stories so far, since Chas dying horribly is a pretty integral part of the plot. (There is a smidgen of hurt/comfort to cushion it. ) 
> 
> Partially inspired by watching that classic Easter movie, ‘Jaws’.

It was Easter Sunday, and John and Chas were hunting a nixie in New York.

Honestly, Chas was surprised at how much he didn’t mind. They’d stopped off in Brooklyn long enough for him to pay a quick visit to Geraldine and Renee, and then driven out of the city towards the small town upstate that had reported a sudden rash of mysterious drowning deaths on its small section of the Hudson River.

It was cold for April, and both he and John were wearing heavier coats and gloves to combat the chill stubbornly hanging over the water. John and Chas had stolen the lone boat docked in the town marina and taken it out into deeper water, near where most of the bodies had been found.

Well, Chas had gotten the boat moving. John had primarily stood around watching him mess around with the motor and offering what he seemed to think were helpful suggestions for hot-wiring a boat despite the fact he knew next to nothing about engines.

After John preformed a ritual to draw the nixie out and what emerged from the water was not a small nixie but some kind of gigantic fanged red squid that looked big enough to blot the sun out of the sky, Chas sighed.

Just once he’d like something to go according to plan.

“John, that doesn’t look like a nixie,” said Chas tiredly, pulling his knife out from its sheath. Nixies were supposed to be lithe water spirits, the exact opposite of the red squid.

John stood still next to him, his head tilted back to stare up at the Lovecraftian horror gurgling in front of them. “Fuck me, it’s a bloody kraken.”

Chas’s head swiveled towards John. “It’s a _what_?” he shouted.

And then one of the thick red tentacles slammed down into the boat. John fell against Chas, losing his balance as the boat began to tip precariously. Chas grunted, catching John and then using his momentum to swing him towards the canopy over the back of the boat, giving him something to grab onto.

Chas had made his peace with the fact that his role in saving the world from the forces of evil seemed to be taking care of John Constantine, and if need be, using himself as a human shield. In life or death situations, his first priority always had to be John.

Another large tentacle came down, this time tilting the boat the other direction, and Chas had nothing to hold. Gravity seemed to flip, and the boat fell away from his feet, pitching him towards the surface of the water, towards the kraken.

John shouted something, his voice hoarse and breaking, but then Chas hit the cold water, surrounded by the red coils of the kraken’s tentacles. One curled around his chest and pulled him down, the water closing around his face before he could take another breath.

Chas struggled against the kraken, water rushing into his ears and nose. His knife was still in his hand, but the kraken's tenticle had his arms pinned to his sides so tightly he couldn’t do much more than poke its slimy red hide with it.

_‘No air, no air, goddammit.’_

He kicked and wriggled against the kraken’s coils as it dragged him farther down into the murky river, further from the ripple of sunlight above his head and the shadow of the boat.

His chest and throat were burning, aching. He wouldn’t last much longer without air. He stabbed the knife upwards into the kraken's body, as hard as his immobile arms would allow.

The kraken turned on him with a gurgling roar, bring him in front of its head, glassy black eyes staring at him. Its round mouth widened slightly, bone-white fangs glistening.

The fangs sank into his shoulder, and Chas yelled, his remaining air bubbling out of his mouth.

***

_Dying was almost always painful, but usually in different ways._

_Some deaths were quick, like when he’d driven a car into a broadcasting tower, where he’d died before he could feel any real pain, the immediate shock taking the edge off until he quickly lapsed into unconsciousness. It was the lingering deaths he hated the most, when he knew he was past the point of no return and there was nothing but pain. Stabbings and gunshot wounds probably hurt the most and unless they’d hit an artery or a vital organ, would take the longest for him to die._

_Up until now, what he considered his most painful death was being speared through the chest by a demonic electrical cable. Stabbing and electrocution, all rolled up into one slow, agonizing package._

_Drowning while being ripped apart by a giant kraken hurt like a son of a bitch._

_The last thing he saw before unconsciousness blessedly overtook him was seeing something come shooting through the water from the boat towards the krakken’s head._

***

Consciousness came back to Chas in a rush as his heart started beating again, gasping as he took a shuddering breath. His eyes snapped open.

He was back on land, lying on the lawn of the marina near the lot where they’d left the taxi. The tiny boat they’d stolen was haphazardly tied up to the rickety wooden dock, listing dangerously to the side.

“He hath risen,” said John somewhere above Chas. “Hello there, mate. Welcome back.” His hand reached down and stroked Chas’s wet hair.

“Did you get the bastard?” asked Chas. He assumed so, since the boat and John looked to be mostly in one piece, but he had to be sure.

“The kraken? It’s at the bottom of the river with a harpoon through its squishy head,” said John, dropping his dusty magic bag of tricks down and then plopping down in the grass next to Chas himself. Like Chas, his clothes were soaking wet, and at some point between when Chas had gone overboard and now he’d lost both his shoes. “It’s dead. Won’t be hurting anybody else.”

Relief flooded his body. Chas let his head drop down back into the grass. “John? No more krakens.”

John winced, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Do you know those things are supposed to be extinct? There hasn't been a sighting since the 1890s. No bloody clue why one suddenly popped up and started picking off boats ‘round here,” he said sourly, as if the kraken not being extinct was a personal affront to his knowledge of supernatural creatures.

Chas looked over to say something pithy, but started when he realized that the front of John’s shirt was splattered in blood. “You hurt?” He asked.

John shook his head, wiping one hand down the front of his shirt. He looked over at Chas pointedly for a moment before staring out over the water. “Not my blood, mate.”

Chas swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. “Mine?”

John nodded. “You were in pretty rough shape when I dragged you out, Chas. Wasn’t sure how long it’d take for you to come back.”

So that’s how he ended up back on land. If he’d revived underwater, he would’ve wasted another life.

Chas sat up gingerly, the nerves in his right arm tingling. Whenever he revived after losing a limb, the injured limb would either be tingly or numb for a few hours while his body readjusted to having it back. After he’d come back after blowing himself and Felix Faust up with the grenade, it’d felt like there’d been an entire swarm of bees underneath his skin for hours.

John shifted slightly, noticing Chas stiffly rock his arm back and forth a few times. “Arm bothering you?”

It felt like dozens of tiny vibrating metal needles were poking at his skin. “A little.”

“Can’t have that. Need you in good working order.” John slid back slightly so he was sitting directly behind Chas.

Chas raised an eyebrow. “John, what are you...” His question was quickly answered when he felt John’s fingers pull down the back of his ripped sweater slightly, the other hand slipping in to gently rub at his injured shoulder.

Goddamit, it felt good. The muscles began to loosen underneath John’s fingers, the tingling lessening.

“I suppose a thank you is in order,” said John gruffly as he continued to massage the tense muscles in Chas’s back and shoulder. “Things would be very different if the krakken had gotten me instead. I’d be the first Constantine to have ‘torn apart by krakken’ in their obituary, at least.”

While John rubbed at his shoulder and neck, Chas thought about it for a moment. Would John have died if he'd fallen overboard and Chas had managed to stay on the boat? While Chas could’ve harpooned the krakken, John probably wouldn’t have escaped it without serious injury and at least one missing limb. His preternatural luck at avoiding dismemberment and death only went so far. And if John had gone out on the boat alone, he’d definitely be a dead man.

It’d been close.

As if in response to Chas’s thoughts, John buried his head against the back of Chas’s neck, reaching around to wrap his arms across Chas’s chest and pressing his body against the curve of Chas’s back. John squeezed him tightly.

“Hey. I'm not going anywhere, John,” said Chas reassuringly. "In this for the long haul."

John breathed on Chas’s neck. “I know, mate.”

Neither of them said what they were both thinking: that Chas only has a finite number of lives that were rapidly dwindling, and none of the dusty magical books John’d consulted offered any clue what would happen to Chas after he used up his last one.

“Don’t understand why you stick around, sometimes,” continued John, letting go of Chas. “Unless you like finding new and exciting ways to die horribly?”

Chas shrugged. “Because you asked me to. Because if I have this gift, I have a responsibility to use it to help others. Help you.”

John gave him an almost rueful half-smile. “You really are my knight, eh? 'Sir Chas the Noble, of the Bleeding Heart'.”

“As long as you’re fighting, I’m fighting with you.” Chas said sternly. “I’m not backing down on this.”

John glanced at him, and then nodded with a more relaxed smile. “Didn’t think you would. After all, you'd have to be a stubborn bastard to keep coming back to me after dying over and over."


End file.
